I’d see something, then spend the rest of the day wondering what the story was. After a while, the bizarre came to seem natural.
Not quite surprising were the TVs and satellite dishes. They were everywhere. Even in the desert. Many times we’d come upon a little nomad settlement with tents for houses and nothing but a couple animals and open land around them. Still, they were bristling with satellite dishes.
Calling Home
One night, I was on an overwatch and things were quiet. Nights were normally slow in Baghdad. Insurgents usually wouldn’t attack then, because they knew we had the advantage with our technology, including our night-vision gear and infrared sensors. So I thought I’d take a minute and call my wife back home, just to tell I was thinking of her.
I took our sat phone and dialed home. Most times, when I talked to Taya, I’d tell her I was back at base, even though I was really on an overwatch or in the field somewhere. I didn’t want to worry her.
This night, for some reason, I told her what I was doing.
“Is it all right to talk?” she asked.
“Oh yeah, it’s all good,” I said. “There’s nothing going on.”
Well, I got maybe another two or three sentences out of my mouth when someone started firing at the building from the street.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Oh, nothing,” I said nonchalantly.
Of course, the gunfire stoked up real loud as the words came out of my mouth.
“Chris?”
“Well, I think I’m going to get going now,” I told her.
“Are you okay?”
“Oh yeah. It’s all good,” I lied. “Nothing happening. Talk to you later.”
Just then, an RPG hit the outside wall right near me. Some of the building smacked into my face, giving me a couple of beauty marks and temporary tattoos courtesy of the insurgency.
I dropped the phone and started returning fire. I spotted the guys down the street and popped one or two; the snipers who were with me downed a bunch more before the rest got the hell out of there.
Fight over, I grabbed up the phone. The batteries had run out, so I couldn’t call back.
Things got busy for a few days, and it wasn’t until two or three days later when I finally got a chance to call Taya and see how she was.
She started crying as soon as she answered the phone.
It turned out I hadn’t actually ended the call before I put down the phone. She’d heard the whole gunfight, complete with shots and curses, before the batteries had finally run out. Which, of course, happened all of a sudden, adding to the anxiety.
I tried to calm her down, but I doubt what I said really eased her mind.
She was always a good sport, always insisting that I didn’t have to hide things from her. She claimed her imagination was a lot worse than anything that really could happen to me.
I don’t know about that.
I made a few other calls home during lulls in battles during my deployments. The overall pace of the action was so intense and continuous that there weren’t many alternatives. Waiting until I got back to our camp might mean waiting for a week or more. And while I’d call then, too, if I could, it wasn’t always possible.
And I got used to the battles. Getting shot at was just part of the job. RPG round? Just another day at the office.
My dad has a story about hearing from me at work one day when I hadn’t had a chance to call in a while. He picked up the phone and was surprised to hear my voice.
He was even more surprised that I was whispering.
“Chris, why is your voice so hushed?” he asked.
“I’m on an op, Dad. I don’t want them to know where I’m at.”
“Oh,” he answered, a little shaken.
I doubt I was actually close enough for the enemy to hear anything, but my father swears that a few seconds later, there were gunshots in the background.
“Gotta go,” I said, before he had a chance to find out what the sound was. “I’ll get back to you.”
According to my father, I called back two days later to apologize for hanging up so abruptly. When he asked if he had overheard the start of a firefight, I changed the subject.
Building My Rep
My knees were still hurting from being pinned under rubble back in Fallujah. I tried to get cortisone shots but couldn’t. I didn’t want to push too hard: I was afraid of getting pulled out because of my injury.
Every once in a while, I took some Motrin and iced them down; that was about it. In battle, of course, I was fine—when your adrenaline is pumped, you don’t feel anything.
Even with the pain, I loved what I was doing. Maybe war isn’t really fun, but I certainly was enjoying it. It suited me.
By this time, I had a bit of a reputation as a sniper. I’d had a lot of confirmed kills. It was now a very good number for such a short period—or any period, really.
Except for the Team guys, people didn’t really know my name and face. But there were rumors around, and my stay here added to my reputation, such as it was.
It seemed like everywhere I set up, I’d get a target. This started to piss off some of the other snipers, who could spend whole shifts and even days without seeing
One day, Smurf, a fellow SEAL, started following me around as we went into an apartment.
“Where are you setting up?” he asked.
I looked around and found a place I thought looked good.
“Right there,” I told him.
“Good. Get the hell out of here. I’m taking this spot.”
“Hey, you take it,” I told him. I went off to find another spot—and promptly got a kill from there.
For a while, it didn’t seem to matter what I did, things would happen in front of me. I wasn’t inventing the incidents—I had witnesses for all my shots. Maybe I saw a little farther, maybe I anticipated trouble better than other people. Or, most likely, I was just lucky.
Assuming being a target for people who want to kill you can be considered luck.
One time, we were in a house on Haifa Street, where we had so many snipers that the only possible place to shoot from was a tiny window above a toilet. I had to actually stand up the whole time.
I still got two kills.
I was just one lucky motherfucker.
One day, we got intel that the insurgents were using a cemetery at the edge of town near Camp Independence at the airport to cache weapons and launch attacks. The only way I could get a view of the place was to climb up on this tall, tall crane. Once at the top, I then had to go out on a thin-mesh platform.
